Comment by coldtea
1 day ago
That's an "all or nothing" fallacy. Just because you use Python and are OK with some slowdown, doesn't mean you're OK with each and every slowdown when you can do better.
To use a trivial example, using a set instead of a list to check membership is a very basic replacement, and can dramatically improve your running time in Python. Just because you use Python doesn't mean anything goes regarding performance.
That's an example of an algorithmic improvement (log n vs n), not a micro benchmark, Mr. Fallacy.
"Mr. Fallacy."? Got any better juvenile name-calling?
The case is among the example numbers given in TFA:
"Dict lookup by key", "List membership check"
Does it have to spell out the difference is algorithmic in this case for the comparison to be useful?
Or, inversely, is the difference between e.g. memory and disk access times insignificant, because it's not algorithmic?